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A Quick Overview of Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic practice began by Daniel David Palmer. Prior to his development of the chiropractic method, he was a healer that firmly believed in natural philosophies for treating patients. He did the first adjustment on the back of a partially deaf janitor when he noticed that one of the vertebrae in his back was out of position.
He had the patient lie down on the floor and began to adjust the vertebrae back into position. After that simple treatment, the patient began told him that he could “hear the rackets on the streets”. After this case, Palmer had a case of heart trouble that found no improvement, until the moment he found another misplaced vertebra and gave relief to the patient. It was thanks to these experiences that D.D. Palmer began developing chiropractic practice.
“Chiropractic” comes from Greek, and means literally “done by hand”. Palmer first argued that the body was a machine that could have its parts manipulated so that a drugless cure is produced. His basic theory was based off a vitalistic notion of health, that states that it comes from the continuous flow of some sort of spiritual life force. Due to misalignments in the spinal cord and the vertebrae, this flow would be disrupted and not be able to reach the whole body, causing disease along the way.
In 1896 Palmer opened the first school to teach his new method, which would eventually become the Palmer College of Chiropractic. One of his first graduates, Solon M. Langworthy, would end up moving to Iowa and opening the second school in 1903. Even with this, in the beginning, not everyone was convinced by his methods, with a paper in Davenport, Iowa written in 1894 calling him a “quack”.
From its beginning, chiropractic was seen negatively by the medical sector, with many chiropractors being sent to jail for “practicing medicine without a license”. This actually got to a point that the American Medical Association (AMA), in 1963, formed a committee to eliminate chiropractic practice. Their practices were unjust, and in 1987 they were found to have engaged in an unlawful conspiracy so that they could restrain the trade of the chiropractic profession.
Then, in the 80s, spinal manipulation began getting recognized in the mainstream, with research being done in collaboration between manipulative methods of chiropractic care and their use in the mainstream health sector. This began the movement towards giving chiropractic care the scientific reform it now has today, with the advancements and advantages you get whenever you meet a modern chiropractor. These days, chiropractors are one of the best professionals when it comes to helping various bodily pains without the need for surgery. If you visit a chiropractor today, you can rest assured that you will receive healthy chiropractic care done right.
